Please go to . . .

My new website:

matthewbibby.com

Tweeting for Business

I wrote previously on a new model (or should I say form) of communication and stated that I was considering:

How twitter could be used in business to improve communication . . .

Twitter asks the question “What are you doing?” which encourages sharing of resources, ideas and encouragement.

One persons answer to this question recently gave me a chuckle:

I think it good that twitter has a core question, however ‘What are you doing?’ does influence the posts that people make . . . I wonder how the conversations would change if the question was ‘What are you being?’ just for a day!

What impact would there be on productivity and communication in the workplace if we embraced microblogging tools such as twitter or yammer as the preferred method for online communication?

Consider for a moment the amount of email clutter that could be reduced!

Yammer (Winner of TechCrunch 50) has a core question of ‘What are you working on?’ and is designed to be used in business networks.

Recently there was interesting discussion in the New York Times about the business models used for twitter and yammer titled ‘Popularity or Income? Two Sites Fight It Out‘:

Yammer tweaks the question, asking, “What are you working on?” The goal, said its chief executive, David Sacks, is to make offices more productive. People on Yammer update colleagues on company events or ask work-related questions without clogging e-mail boxes with mass mailings.

One very interesting point about Yammer is how quickly they provide support, even when you are not expecting any!  When I first heard about the company I asked my colleagues (via twitter) if anyone had any case studies about using yammer or twitter in business and Kevin from yammer replied to me asking if he could provide some information!

This proactive and preemptive approach to customer service really intrigued me and Kevin promptly answered my yammer related questions and provided me with lots of useful information.

To see the yammer video tour (turn your speakers up) and learn more about how it can be used in your business click on the image below:

This form of communication encourages online collaboration and would be a great way to connect a team of people, especially teams who are based in various locations.

If you are interested in finding out more about yammer then have a look at the following pages:

Communication Problems and How Yammer Solves Them

Security Concerns

Overview of Communication Mediums ie iPhone, Blackberry, Desktop, etc.

Step by Step Guide to Yammer

Testimonials

How can you see this being used in your business?

SOB

Today I was called a SOB and it really made my day!

Liz Strauss’s writes about ‘Successful & Outstanding Blog(gers)‘:

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

Thanks for the encouragement Liz!

12 Firefox Add-Ons

I have just been reading David Fair’s post: Which internet browser is best for learning professionals?

David discusses a range of browser options and share with us:

My primary reason for sticking with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer all these years was simply that I could depend on it to render web pages correctly. Each time I flirted with alternatives, I’d run home to IE as soon as I noticed missing objects and mangled layouts.

I did the same a year or so again – closed down firefox and went back to Internet Explorer for all of those webpages that were ‘IE only’.

Then a friend told me about the a firefox add-on called “IE tab” that allows you to open a virtual IE tab within firefox.  It works so simply . . .

Once installed a little firefox symbol will be shown at the bottom of your firefox window: .  This allows you to change what engine you are using to render a webpage, click on it and the page will reload in Internet Explorer .  You can also teach IE tab which pages are best displayed in Internet Explorer so whenever you visit those websites they will automatically be opened in a IE tab.

I then got thinking about some of the other wonderful firefox add-ons that improve my browsing experience and productivity and wanted to share these with you.

ColorZilla:  ‘Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies’ – wonderful  to quickly grab the colors from client logos/materials and use the same color scheme in development.

Delicious Bookmarks:  ‘The official Firefox add-on for Delicious, the world’s leading social bookmarking service’.  The best delicious add-on I have tried!  You can open all of your delicious bookmarks in a sidebar at the press of a button (or keyboard combination).

Download Statusbar: ‘View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar – without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing. ‘

Faviconize Tab: This tool really frees up your browsing by allow you to reduce the size of tabs that you use often (e.g. gmail, twitter, delicious, facebook etc.) to just the ‘favicon’.

Google Gears: Google Gears ‘enables more powerful web applications’, it allows supported web based applications to run offline and heaps of other geeky things that you can read about here.

Google Reader Watcher: Integrates Google Reader into firefox by adding a little notification at the bottom of your browser showing how many new items you have .

NetTabURL: Gives you the ability to specify what page to open when you open a new tab.  I have this set as my delicious bookmarks.

Open Image in New Tab:  ‘Adds right-click context menu item for opening images in new tabs.’

PageStyle2Tab: Helps you quickly identify a tab as it sets the ‘current page style to the tab’.

Save Session:  This great add-on means that you can press the save session and exit button when closing firefox.  The next time you open firefox all of your tabs will be restored.

Undo Closed Tabs Button:  Allows you to reopen any closed tabs.  This has saved me a million times!

I have also tried lots of other add-ons . . .

When installing a new add-on the focus needs to be on answering the question “how will this improve my browsing experience?”.

Because if it doesn’t . . . uninstall it!

What are your favorite add-ons?

A new model of communication

All over the world people are tweeting 140 character responses to the question ‘what are you doing?’ as a way to communicate with friends, colleagues and others who have common interests.

TwitDir (a twitter directory) shows more than three million people are communicating in this way.

The exchange is different to normal conversation, it results in sharing of resources, help with fleshing out ideas, stories are told, people are inspired, problems are solved, feedback is gained and collaboration occurs.

The trick is to know who to follow and how to manage the flood of information; as well as being prepared for the fact that you may get more insight into the person that you are following than you have had previously.

I originally started using twitter a few months ago but was rather disappointed about the whole experiment because I didn’t know anyone else who used it.

This changed when I came across Jane Hart’s Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter.  Suddenly I realized that I would get the most out of this tool by connecting with others who worked in same field as me.  There are over 400 entries on this list so I just went through and picked out professionals whose work I already followed and others whose descriptions inspired me.

Not long after I started using twitter a new site was launched which has directories for tweeters in all sorts of industries.  JustTweetIt’s Education directory has links for over a hundred people that you could follow and you can easily add yourself to this directory so others can follow your updates.

Now I have a stream of people who I follow.

This means that whenever I choose to tune in to twitter I have the chance to talk about eLearning, communication, design and web 2.0+.  To share articles, pictures, videos and blog posts.  To collaborate, promote, assist and inspire – it is the perfect tool to connect with others who have similar interests.

The 140 character limit really encourages you to be precise about what you are saying, something I really benefit from as I tend to be a bit wordy.

Being able to quickly and easily provide an update on what you are doing and to get feedback from others results in a better work flow and reduces the amount of time it takes to share an idea.

Just now I have twittered the following:

Within 5 minutes I have a number of responses suggesting that what is most important in a new model of communication is the “ability to convey what you want people to know” (@mayhemstudios) and “the message itself, by far” (@alexhosterman).

By considering the way that we communicate and share our lives with others, we have an opportunity to change the way that we work together in the future.

For those of you who are new to the world of Twitter, I suggest you check out Twitter in Plain English Video by CommonCraft below:

I am considering how twitter could be used in business to improve communication and how it could be integrated into the eLearning experience.

I will post more on these topics another day, but for now I leave you with this question . . .

how do you see us communicating in the future?

Us & the Machine

A very refreshing look at Web 2.0 by Michael Wesch.

This video is a much watch; it highlights the changes that have occurred in the way that we interact over the web, raises some very interesting questions and reminds us that we are writing the web – we are teaching the machine.

I have watched this video a dozen times already and continue to press replay because it encourages me to rethink the way that I interact, the way that I create and the way that I consume information.

When did you realise that we are writing the web?

Development has begun!

As a result of my recent decision, I have begun developing my new website.

If you are interested in this development or are thinking about setting up your own page using wordpress then you can subscribe to the RSS feed or via email at matthewbibby.com.

Now I just have to figure out how to build the website I imagine . . .

Capturing data, easily.

One the easiest ways to create an online form is by using the Google Docs ‘form’ feature.

Forms allow you to obtain and organize relevant data easily.

They can improve productivity and data integrity as well as providing a great way of getting feedback from trainees and students.

Setting up a form is easy and I suggest that you create one while reading this post (all the links will open in new tabs/windows in your browser).

• Go to the Google Docs site and login/register
• Then create a new form as shown below

• You can then enter the title of the form and any instructions you wish

• Then start on your first question

• You will notice that a ‘Name’ field is added by default
• Add your question title and choose the question type
• For this example I will use a Scale question (think Likert)
• Then fill in the fields and your first question is done!

• There is big Add Question button at the top of the page that you can use to add more questions
• If you want to change the order of the questions simply drag and drop!
• You can preview, edit or delete individual questions
• Once you have finished writing the questions, hit the link to the spreadsheet at the bottom of the page

• This is the link to your form, you can also email the form or embed it in your own webpage

• I strongly suggest editing the confirmation message (i.e. the page that appears after a form has been submitted) to personalize the appearance of your form
• Once a form is complete all the responses are added into a Google Spreadsheet, which can then be exported to a variety of formats (.csv, .xls, .pdf etc)

A couple of other things to note:

• People completing the form do not need to have a Google account or to register for one to complete the form that you create
• Make sure that you understand the level of security of these forms before using them to collect confidential information

These forms can be used to:

• Get feedback from trainees, students etc.
• As a way of brainstorming ideas (especially before a meeting as it gets everyone thinking about what will be discussed)
• To collect information, track expenses, get course feedback etc

Please leave a comment letting others know how you are going to use this knowledge. In what ways can you use forms to improve you productivity?

Oh yeah, the form that was created while this post was being prepared is located here and if you would like to save a copy of these steps please download this PDF file.

Finally, thanks @beckcollect for letting me know this functionality existed

A decision. An opportunity.

After years of . . . ‘thinking about’ . . . ‘going to’ . . . and ‘working on’ . . . I have decided to take the development of this website seriously and am going to invest my time with the hope of inspiring & helping others.

It feels good to have made this decision.

It feels right.

Liz Strauss:
I took my brave and my vulnerable out of their separate jars.
They’re not broken anymore. In that way, neither am I

For a long time I deliberately didn’t have an online presence.  This decision, to be an online ’spectator’ was mainly because I felt vulnerable exposing myself to the online community.

I have been able to ‘take my vulnerable’ out of its separate jar thanks to the encouragement that I have received from friends and colleagues in continuing with my blog.  It is funny, while I have been working in training & eLearning as well as studying related areas for many years – it wasn’t until I started using Twitter that I developed a true understanding of what it meant to be part of an online community.

If you are interested in finding like minded professionals in twitter make sure you check out the Directory of Learning Professionals and Just Tweet It’s Education Directory.

One of the hardest decisions to make at this point is answering the question:

“What will you actually be doing on your website?”

This question has many answers, yet none of them capture the essence of what my new website www.matthewbibby.com will be about.

Some of the possible responses include:

• Showcasing eLearning development skills & resources
• Providing technological advice on the use of web 2.0 applications in business
• Discussing the use of new technology in eLearning development
• Developing eLearning material showcasing how to use web 2.0 applications to increase productivity
• Gathering material for use in online course creation
• A platform from which to offer informational products and my freelance services

I don’t know where this project will take us . . . so as an early visitor to my blog I would like to give you the opportunity to play a part in shaping the future of this website.  All you need to do is complete a 30 second, anonymous survey.

Don’t worry, no registration is required, just click here and the survey will open in a new window.

There will be many exciting developments on this site over the next few months so make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss anything!

Thanks!

Engagement – Blue Day 2008

Blue Day 2008: “A day when the tech and social media community in Australia can work together to raise the awareness of anxiety and depression.”

Among other things, I have been thinking about Blue Day since I made my last post . . .  considering the impact that anxiety and depression has had on my life.

I tend to be optimistic about life and (thankfully) I have not spent much of my time being anxious or depressed.

Emo de Nayadel’s Water Crystals video came to mind as an appropriate video to share:

As well as thinking about Blue Day I have also been very focused on the use of Web 2.0 tools & concepts in elearning.

My recent involvement with various people in the social media community (primarily via twitter and the Work Literacy Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals course) has highlighted the benefits of being engaged in a supportive online community.  I feel connected to others who are passionate about social media in a way that I hadn’t before.

The world is changing.  The way that we communicate with each other is changing and the ways that we engage each other on both a personal and professional level are different to what they were 10 years ago.

The changing nature of communication means that anyone can be actively involved in online communities . . . if you are passionate about something then find others who feel the same way!

Anxiety and depression are serious issues that impact us all.  Reach out into your community (online or offline) and share your passion and enthusiasm with others.  It really can help make a difference.

You can reduce the impact of anxiety and depression in our community by modeling engaged and enthusiastic behavior.  There is a lot to live for . . . however when you are suffering from anxiety or depression it may not always seem this way.

Wherever possible, get actively involved in a community of interest and see how you can share with others your enthusiasm or passion for that topic.

You very well may change someone’s life for the better.

How can you reach out to sufferers of anxiety and depression and positively impact their lives?